


Cleverly-named series of oneshots

by Aylin_Falsin



Category: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Massive Headcanon Dump Masquerading as a Proper Fanfic, Not Beta Read, Oneshot, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2019-08-09 19:52:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16456241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aylin_Falsin/pseuds/Aylin_Falsin
Summary: Exactly what it says in the title: a collection of oneshots about our favourite moderately infamous necromancer and the people and person-shaped entities around him.Updated occasionally, whenever I have a bout of inspiration.





	1. Birthdays

**Author's Note:**

> A fair warning: this is my first fanfic, it's not betaed, and English isn't my native language. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
> 
> (Seriously though, all criticism, even of "DELET THIS" variety will be greatly appreciated.)

Johannes Cabal’s eighteenth birthday celebration was a humble affair, which suited him perfectly fine. He received a gift from his parents – a gaudy stickpin that, according to father's suggestion that lacked even a smallest hint of subtlety, suited perfectly for an aspiring young solicitor – and a bunch of postcards, all except one from relatives back in Germany with generic greetings, he was sure, never changed over the years, not that he ever bothered to spare them more than a cursory glance. The odd postcard was from Horst, who managed to compensate for not being around to act extra obnoxiously for the day, due to having left for the university, by writing an obnoxiously bawdy poem listing various things Johannes was now legally allowed to do. The poem was followed by a threat (or "promise" as anyone but Johannes would perceive it) to come home sometime next week and have a night on the town with his little brother, during which they shall undoubtedly engage in some of the things listed. The prospect of having to spend time with his brother relatively soon put Johannes into a sullen mood, or rather, a more sullen mood than usual. He did, however, perk up considerably when, after his mandatory family time was over and done with, he practically flew out of the house and headed at a brisk pace for the nearby park towards what he viewed as the most pleasant part on that day, or any day for that matter.

When he arrived at his destination Berenice was already waiting for him. She greeted him with a kiss on a cheek and gifted him a small black notebook and a silver fountain pen. The weather was unusually warm for the middle of November, so instead of going to a café like they had originally planned, they simply strolled around the park, engaged in a conversation that jumped from topic to topic, not even attempting to have a meaningful discussion but rather just enjoying the company of each other. At one point her hand found its way in his, and he became so content with life that he couldn't even bring himself to glare at the passerby to discourage them from any possible comments on such display of public affection. When the time came to say their goodbyes, far to soon, as always, she stood on her tip-toes and whispered into his ear that she had another, very personal gift prepared for him but it will have to wait until the weekend when her family will be away from home. She then laughed as his cheeks flushed red and said he looked adorable when embarrassed. With any other person such grievous assault on his dignity and even the mere suggestion that he might look adorable under any circumstances would have been retaliated with a cutting remark and maybe even some bodily harm, but for her he was ready to make a fool of himself a thousand times over, so he laughed along with her.

Johannes went home in uncharacteristically high spirits. He couldn’t help but smile, and it wasn’t one of his usual sardonic smirks either, but rather a broad beaming grin. The future seemed bright. He was in his final school year, meaning that in a few months he will finally leave the assemblage of imbeciles that called themselves his classmates and teachers behind. He had promised himself that he will definitely gather enough courage to ask for Berenice’s hand in marriage before they leave for their respective universities. And then… The future was a tad foggier at that point but shone none dimmer, and in that light even the ever-looming shadow of Hinks & Hinks with its inevitable tedium of resolving endless petty disputes between the gentry didn’t seem nearly as awful as usual.  
Whatever his eighteenth and all the following years had in store for him, he was ready to face it.

***

Cabal spent his nineteenth birthday and two days after that in his attic, leaving only for the bathroom or to brew another pot of coffee. He was too engrossed in his work to worry about such frivolities as sleep, nutrition and personal hygiene. Said work consisted of meticulously transcribing the contents of an ancient manuscript into a small black notebook, his fourth one by now. It was a tedious and delicate task – the author’s penmanship was atrocious, and the book was in poor condition due to its previous owner having had the audacity to decompose on top of it. The fact that he had to work with his left hand – his right arm being held firmly in a self-made cast – didn’t help the matter in the slightest. And yet he couldn’t help but smile from time to time, even though it made his split lip bleed. He could already tell this book is going to lead to the major breakthrough he desperately needed. After many months of throwing himself blindly at anything even remotely supernatural in desperate search of a path to his ultimate goal, having destroyed his family in the process; after many nights of forced idleness, brought on by either serious injuries, incarceration or a combination of both, when the suffocating feeling of doubt reared its ugly head despite his best attempts to smother it in its infancy, whispering to him that what if there was no recipe for perfect resurrection, what if the best he could hope for was either a tormented shadow of its former self or a bloodthirsty monstrosity wearing its former body like a grotesque, ill-fitting suit; after all that he finally caught the end of the metaphorical thread that shall lead him out of this labyrinth of esoterica.

Never an optimist, even at the best of times, Cabal, however, allowed himself a small sliver of hope. Perhaps, he thought, if his further enquiries will prove itself as fruitful as this one, he will not be spending his next birthday alone.

***

On the night of his twentieth birthday Cabal found himself in the basement of a remote country mansion, chained to a granite slab covered with shoddily made arcane carvings, surrounded by about two dozens chanting idiots in silly hats, which was all sorts of inconvenient. He tried to manoeuvre his hand to check his watch. He had a sinking suspicion he was going to miss his train.

The loudest idiot with the largest hat, or, as he referred to himself, Archbishop of the Unholy Church of Pvbylziw-hnzhs the Merciless, raised his hands in a dramatic gesture that betrayed a failed career in acting (for some reason every cult leader Cabal crossed paths with so far seemed to have come from an acting background, he was yet to meet one, who used to be, say, an accountant) and bellowed in a well-trained voice:

“Brothers and sisters! Rejoice! For today we shall pay our first tribute to The Scorcher of Worlds, The Great…”

“Oh, this is your first sacrifice?” Cabal asked conversationally, as if he was chatting to a friend that decided to pick up a new hobby. “That explains it. I was wondering how all of you were still alive.”

“What?” the Archbishop said in a small voice, unnerved by Cabal’s nonchalance. Some of the other cultists stopped chanting, puzzled by their leader’s sudden shift in attitude.

Cabal was about to explain that Pvbylziw-hnzhs was notoriously picky with its sacrifices, accepting only brunette female virgins between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, whose name started with a vowel, and, seeing as he was neither of those things, they were about to learn why Pvbylziw-hnzhs had the soubriquet Merciless, when suddenly the leader burst into flames and fell to the ground screaming and writhing in agony. Before the rest of the cultists could process what was happening, they were met with the same fate.

After a few minutes the screaming died down, and Cabal was left alone and still enchained in a room full of smouldering corpses. Damn. He was definitely going to miss his train now.

***

Cabal shuddered, despite sitting inside the train’s sleeping car, which was always comfortably warm, wrapped his coat tighter around him and took a long sip from a cup full of hot tea. He did come down with a cold after his unexpected brief trip to a pocket dimension, exactly as he feared. Probably all that thrice-damned rain was to blame. His initial plan was to just power through it, managing the carnival as usual, but Horst took one look at him, declared that he appeared about as lively as one of his failed experiments, and proceeded to drag him kicking and screaming (or to be exact, making unsuccessful attempts at kicking and cursing hoarsely in German) into the sleeping car. There Horst managed to convince him to take it easy for a few days to recover with the combination of appeals to his common sense, threats to use mesmerism and promises to take care of the enterprise to his best abilities in the meantime. Eventually, Cabal grew tired of arguing, even the mix of indignation and his natural stubbornness proving to be insufficient fuel to keep him running in his current state, and agreed to let his brother temporarily have full reigns of the carnival.

Cabal closed his eyes trying to stave off approaching headache but opened them a couple of seconds later when he felt the air inside the car shift. “Hello, Horst” he said evenly.

“Evening” his brother replied, the usual cheeriness of his voice somewhat subdued this time. “How are you feeling? Do you need anything?”

“Do not treat me like an invalid.” Cabal spat out, the coldness of his voice directly proportional to the heat radiating from his body. “I am an adult man with a simple cold, I am perfectly capable of attending to my ne-” Cabal suspected the lengthy coughing fit that didn’t let him finish his last sentence and left him gasping for air and clutching at his chest undermined the point he was trying to make somewhat.

Horst gave Cabal a concerned look that made him want to punch his older brother square in the jaw.

“Anyway” he said, suppressing the urge with a great deal of effort. “How is today’s business?”

Horst thought for a few moments before answering. “The carousel is much more popular now. See, I told you we should have ditched the Revelations theme right away.” Cabal scoffed. ”What else, what else… Oh, there’s been a small incident at the House of Medical Monstrosity – apparently an old lady fainted for some reason. Bones says she did so of excitement after seeing his sculpted physique, but I’m not particularly inclined to believe him.”

Cabal waved his hand dismissively at Bones’ dealings with excitable old ladies. “What about the carnival’s main purpose? Or more accurately, its only purpose?”

“There hasn’t been anyone particularly wicked around as of yet” Horst admitted. “Except that one bloke, who tried to cheat at the penny arcade.” Cabal sat up. “Oh, come on. It hardly seems like a sin deserving of eternal damnation. I’m pretty sure none of the Ten Commandments say ‘Thou shalt not insert a coin on a string into a fruit machine slot’. Besides, the bloody thing scared him silly when it tried to tear his finger off. I believe that’s enough of a punishment.”

“You never know. Maybe he’s a professional con artist and that was merely the least of his offences” Cabal suggested.

“What’s your proposition then? We just grab every Tom, Dick and Harry on a small chance one of them might lead a secret life of crime?” Horst asked sarcastically.

Cabal chose to ignore the sarcasm. “That would give our undertaking an immense boost, yes.”

Horst’s lip curled at the word “our” but he decided not to comment on it. Instead he said “Look, I’ve already told you: the moment I see somebody who has already earned a place in Hell – and although you hold a different opinion on it, I am quite a good judge of character – I’ll personally drag them directly to you.” He turned to the door and took a few steps forward, apparently settled on leaving the car the more conventional way. He suddenly stopped and turned back to Cabal. “Oh right, I almost forgot. Happy birthday. Or as happy as you can have under current circumstances.”

Cabal gave his sibling a confused look. “Happy birthday?” Horst repeated in a more uncertain tone. “You do remember you’re turning twenty-seven today, right?”

“Yes, yes, of course I remember” Cabal muttered, staring into his teacup as if it contained all the secrets of the universe.

Horst was going to say something but changed his mind, giving his brother another concerned look instead, which went unnoticed this time, and left carefully closing the door behind him.

Cabal was hardly aware of Horst leaving. Twenty-seven, he thought, he was twenty-seven years old already. At some point he had completely lost track of time. No, no, he was still perfectly aware of its passage, but the days ceased to hold any meaning to him. He paid attention to the dates’ significance only when it was convenient: this day was a national holiday, which meant most workers, including morgues staff should leave home earlier than usual, that day was some sort of public event, which meant most of the policemen should be gathered around a number of particular streets where the celebrations would be held. And he was perfectly aware he was getting older. After all, it’s rather hard not to notice this sort of thing, especially when you’re trying not to think how much younger she is now compared to you. And yet somehow nine whole years had fleeted past him.

Cabal set the cup on the table with a hard ‘clink’ and buried his face in his palms.

He has been doing this for almost nine years now, but he was hardly any closer to his ultimate goal than back when he was just a clueless eighteen-year-old chasing ghosts, sometimes literally. Every lead he pursued turned out to be false, every path he took eventually led to a dead end. And now he was in the middle of dubious wager with the Prince of Lies, just so he could go back to his studies. A terrible idea has suddenly entered his mind: what if he was wrong and his soullessness had no effect on his research? That would not only render this entire venture completely pointless but throw him back into square one, and he couldn’t afford it, not after nine years already spent. No, no! There could be no mistake, his current state have indeed affected a sizeable part of his work, it must have, there was no other explanation. These thoughts were just the illness clouding his judgement.

Cabal stood up, went to his desk, swaying slightly, and retrieved a school exercise book that he used to keep tabs on the soul-collecting operation in a form of convenient graph. The steadily growing line representing the number of souls over time was a reassuring sight, and Cabal said to himself, after he wins this moronic bet he shall work thrice as hard, to make for the lost time, safe in the knowledge he could fully trust the results of his experiments now. Yes, he did waste some time on ultimately pointless research, but every failure meant another possibility eliminated and every eliminated possibility meant increased chances of finding what he was yearning for. He was still relatively young, and if he would keep successfully avoiding torch-bearing mobs, armies of the undead, vicious beasts from beyond the veil of reality and other such unpleasantries, he had high chances of making it to the old age. In the end, it didn’t matter how many birthdays he have already had, what mattered was to ensure she will get to celebrate her nineteenth.

When Horst returned to the sleeping car close to sunrise he found his brother pretending he wasn't practising a card trick a mere moments ago. He was surprised but delighted when he realized Johannes has apparently gotten over the bout of melancholy that took hold of him early in the evening. Horst had no time to ponder over this metamorphosis, however, for the dawn’s rapid approach urged him to seek the cover of darkness. As he was about to close the lid of his chest, already slipping into a curious state that was more akin to unconsciousness than sleep, he could swear he heard Johannes say quietly “Thank you for the birthday wishes.”


	2. Graves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's still not betaed, and I highly doubt my English has improved in the past months. So continue being afraid.

There is a small town in England, not unlike many other small towns – relatively old but with history about as colourful as a concrete block, picturesque but not in a memorable way, near enough to a major city to occasionally feel the urban hustle and bustle, but far enough away for life there to be quiet most of the time. The town’s graveyard is equally unremarkable, with not much else to offer besides its primary function – there are no unusual headstones or poetic epitaphs to catch an eye of someone who wishes to engage in macabre sightseeing; while several minor celebrities and moderately notorious criminals were buried there, none of them have accumulated enough fame or infamy in life to have people want to come to their final resting place, be it to pay respects to the late idol or to express joy over the fiend’s passing; any young poet looking for the perfect spark of inspiration to finally start that one poem that will surely grant them the title of modern-day Lord Byron is highly unlikely to find it there – the greenery is healthy, thanks to the efforts of the groundskeepers, the local crow population is rather skittish and the fogs rise only in wee hours of the morning, all but gone by the time poets usually get out of bed. And those with the appetite for tales of mysterious happenings and ghastly apparitions will find the local dead disappointingly well-behaved, apparently content with staying six feet under and having no desire to rise at night to scare unsuspecting passerby. Well, that last part is not entirely true. Dull as these grounds may be, some of their graves do have a curious story or two attached to them.

One such grave belongs, as evidenced by the inscription on the headstone of fancy marble, to a Horst Cabal. The stone itself is strangely featureless – in addition to the name bearing only dates of birth and death (only little more than twenty years apart) and the ever-present RIP. But if you were to have witnessed the man’s funeral you’d probably assume it was done simply out of convenience, for, judging by the number of people who had come to send him on his final journey, to list all his virtues and accomplishments, and all those, who would miss him dearly, on a single headstone, one would have needed a block of marble the size of Colossus of Rhodes.

Men and women from all over the country (even a few foreigners, according to their accents) have gathered that inappropriately sunny morning to watch the proceedings – not that there was much to see, there wasn't even a coffin for the man was declared dead in absentia, instead a couple of personal effects were to be placed into the shallow hole in the ground – and even with their best efforts to stand as closely to one another as was humanly possible without invading each other's personal space the mourners still took quite a good chunk of the graveyard, much to the discontent of those, who were unfortunate enough to have chosen that day to visit their dearly departed. Despite its size the crowd was oddly homogenous: the majority of the mourners were young socialites, and most of them felt discomfort in equal parts with grief, but for different reasons. Some were unused to being awake before at least noon. Some were displeased they had to wear black, which was decidedly out that season. Some have been hit with a revelation that youth, good looks and popularity among the peers did not guarantee protection from a sudden visit from the Grim Reaper, and that they very well may be the next to bite the dust. And some simply stood too close to the deceased’s father – one of the few mourners with grey in their hair, a haggard man with naught a hint of former portliness, being held by the shoulders by his wife seemingly for physical rather than moral support – to hear him mutter to himself, rehearsing the apology speech he would never get the opportunity to deliver.

“'I am so terribly sorry for this whole farce, my dear boy, but your mother insisted on it, and you know how persistent she can be'... No, no, I’m the one at fault here, not Liese. I’m the man of the house, I should have held my ground. 'I would have never given up on you so early, but Hans said the local constabulary wasn’t able to find anything despite having searched for you far and wide, so I had to accept the evidence'... No, that won’t do either. Nothing will. When he comes back I should just fall on my knees before him and beg for forgiveness.”

By now, however, the grave has clearly been abandoned, giving no indication that this man was ever beloved by so many people – the grass around it grows tall, only ever stepped on by the groundskeepers' feet, and moss has started to creep up the stone. But such an example of fleeting nature of grief isn’t the most notable thing about it. For that you need to cast your eyes on another grave not far from this one.

It belongs to Gottfried Cabal, the writing on the stone denotes that he was the father of Horst and that he outlived his child by only a few weeks. Not a single living soul has visited this grave for quite some time either, ever since a woman, whose hunched posture and ashen face made her look much older than she really was, took a brief stop on her way to the train station to say one last goodbye to her husband and, as far as she was concerned, her only child. But unlike his son’s, Mr. Cabal’s final resting place looks remarkably neat as if under a magic spell (for the record, it is, although the man, who cast it, was not aware of this useful little side effect of the particular protection spell he chose, and he never saw this effect at first hand, for the only other time he’s ever been to this grave he was far more concerned with its contents, than its state.) 

Stranger still, local nightwatchmen say since relatively recently they have started occasionally seeing a mysterious figure appear out of nowhere, leave flowers at Mr. Cabal’s grave and then disappear into the thin air once again. Nobody has ever had the chance to get close enough to the figure to discern any details, but the flowers it leaves appear to be a perfectly normal, if a bit extravagant, bouquet of lilies. The watchman, who was the first to report this perplexing occurrence, also claims that the first time this figure appeared it stood by the grave of Cabal the younger for a few moments, shook its head and said something in a disappointed tone, before moving on to the grave of Cabal the elder, although on later sightings it paid no mind to Horst Cabal’s burial site.

If you walk a little further down the path, deeper into the graveyard, you will find the grave that used to belong to a young lady named Berenice Siddall. The epitaph speaking of a delicate flower that was plucked by the Reaper’s hand far too early and now blooms in Heaven suggests a tragic fate. And the rusted remains of hastily assembled iron cages around the graves close to it suggest that this plot was once a scene of a despicable crime.

Two men visit this grave once or twice a year, more out of obligation, rather than to mourn. They stand there in silence, for all the words have already been said, all the tears have already been shed, and the wound this death had left them has long since healed. One of them might suggest they should move the grave closer to mother’s and father’s, but the other will say they should leave it be, for it had been disturbed more than enough times already. The grave is empty, unceremoniously unearthed and its occupant stolen in what was merely one in a series of shocking incidents that culminated in the main suspect’s house disappearing one night, presumably with its owner still inside. Both men know that and still repulsed by it, even though the time has dulled this feeling as well. And if on their way back to the graveyard gates the eyes of either of them happen to fall on one of the Cabals’ headstones, he will feel a momentary flash of anger and blurt out that one day he is going to find that perverted bastard and give him a long overdue pummelling. The other man will nod in agreement. But neither of them will ever do anything like that, for they have families and obligations, and other things far more important than searching for the wretch, who had defiled their little sister’s remains many years ago and, come to think of it, have probably already received his just punishment in the form of a torches-and-pitchforks-bearing mob and is now burning in Hell.

And then there is one grave you will never find on this graveyard, or anywhere else for that matter. Its owner is very much alive – despite numerous attempts by countless entities to fix such a glaring error – and will most definitely shoot you if you dare to suggest that he should be pushing daisies. But he has been dead for a long time all the same. It’s hard to say when exactly he died. Maybe he died on the same day as Miss Siddall. Maybe he died a couple of days later, when a thought entered his mind, cutting through the numbness like a scalpel, a thought that seemed absurd at first but became more and more logical the more he pondered on it. Perhaps he died on Grimpen Burial Ground with his brother’s cries for help echoing in his ears. Or perhaps – when he came home one morning to an empty house and a letter beginning with the words “I am ashamed at myself for having brought you into this world”. Or when he was washing the blood that wasn’t his off his hands for the first time. Or when the Little Old Man stepped out of the shadowy corner of his study, already holding a pen and a piece of parchment. Regardless, this dead man knows no rest. He haunts graveyards, cemeteries, crypts, tombs, sepulchres, morgues, he haunts museums, libraries and archives, he haunts dungeons and vaults, he haunts hostile locations of impossible geometry that have driven myriad other men insane. He haunts every place that promises him the way out of the grave he had dug himself into. The grave that lies in the hidden basement chamber of a lone house that stands on a remote hillside.

Only he never realizes that he just digs himself deeper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't remember, whether or not vampires can walk on consecrated ground in JC universe, but let's just assume, Horst is such a nice guy that God gives him a pass.


	3. Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now, in addition to broken English, there's a few bits of broken German. Hooray!

Horst Cabal was an excellent liar. Although saying that is somewhat of an understatement, for he had turned the act of lying into an art form. And like any true artist he practiced a wide variety of techniques – from carefully leading his audience into a complex web of deception, constructed well in advance, with half-truths and clever equivocations to blurting out complete and utter bosh and just rolling with it – and did so with hardly a failure, leaving even the most adamant sceptics hanging on his every word, eagerly demanding he pull more wool over their eyes.

He hasn’t reached this level of mastery overnight, of course. In fact, in his early years he hated lying. He was taught that dishonesty, especially towards one’s parents, was a terrible sin only the most dastardly of villains ever commit, so he resorted to it only as a last-ditch attempt to conceal the results of his misdemeanours. His first lies were clumsy and primitive (not helped by the fact that he was unable to stick to them for very long, always breaking down and admitting his wrongdoings at the slightest hint of doubt) and served to only upset his parents. That, in turn, made him feel especially miserable, for the only thing that was worse than the stern gaze Mother fixed upon him as he fumbled through his fibs was the pitying look she gave him as she listened to his tearful confessions, and the only thing that was worse than Father’s booming voice, with which he declared his punishment, was the disappointed tone, in which he added that that wasn’t the way a good little boy should behave. Horst was a good little boy, or at least he tried to be, but it was so awfully hard to do when all the most fun things in life seemed to be forbidden. With each failed attempt to behave properly, however, he more and more often entertained the thought that, perhaps, if a lie was told with a noble goal in mind, say, to prevent one’s parents from being upset with him, then it might not be a bad thing after all. So he kept lying, no matter how much it displeased Mother and Father and how often he was punished for it, and as his skills improved and the punishments became less and less frequent, his conviction that lying can sometimes be a good thing only grew.

During the blissful but, alas, extremely short period of time, when his brother, who at that point had just begun exploring the world around him, considered anyone older than him a figure of unquestionable authority on every subject in existence, Horst realized that lying could not only be useful but also fun. He lied to Johannes about the edibility of things they picked off the floor or found in the back garden, about whether it was wise to ask Father the meaning of the word they have overheard him shout during a heated telephone conversation the other day, about how losing one’s tooth meant one has begun ageing rapidly and was doomed to expire at any moment, about the man-eating beasties with too many teeth to count that lurked under beds and especially savoured little boys, who liked to break their brothers’ toys, and about a myriad other things. Predictably, soon enough Johannes have developed immense level of distrust towards his older brother’s words, regarding anything Horst said with an icy gaze, to the point where Horst was certain Johannes would doubt even the most obvious truth like “two plus two equals four” as long as it came out of his mouth. Not that Horst minded either if those. Quite the contrary: the gaze was but a feeble parody of Mother’s that only amused him and the suspicion added a nice bit of challenge to fooling his brother.

He lied for his brother’s sake too, oftentimes denying Johannes’ involvement in a deed they were both responsible for, or even taking the blame for something only Johannes did. He did so because he was taught that his duty as an older sibling was to always protect the younger. And that was one lesson the truthfulness of which he never doubted.

When both boys were deemed old enough to be allowed to interact with houseguests, Horst discovered a new type of lies that quickly became his favourite – compliments. He liked people and wanted people to like him, and the realization that he could win people over with just a few words of praise, even if insincere, was nothing short of amazing. He lied to the aunties and uncles, the neighbours, the men from Father’s work and their wives, the women from Mother’s gardening club and their husbands, and he relished every bit of attention he received for his efforts. But more than anything he enjoyed seeing Mother beam with pride whenever a guest commented on what a well-behaved boy he was (“unlike his brother” they usually added, which, Horst was ashamed to admit, also gave him a certain feeling of superiority), or hearing Father laugh and say "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as the saying goes" whenever a female guest called him "such a ladies man already", even though he had no idea what that meant.

***

Admittedly, shortly after the family moved to England, Horst’s up until that moment steady progress on the path of deception got seriously hindered by language and cultural barriers. Never one to be discouraged by failure, he took to studying the idiosyncrasies of his new home and its people with great diligence, revising his old tricks and picking up some new ones in the process, and by the time the boys were deemed proficient enough in English to be sent to a proper English school, Horst could lie in his second language as skilfully as he did in his native one.

At school he lied mainly to the teachers, for he had no need to fashion a fictitious image for himself to earn the adoration of his peers. He took great care in noting little quirks and weaknesses of each educator to later use them in creating lies tailor-made for every one of them. Mister A, whom almost every student, Horst included, would call his favourite without a second thought, was an amiable man, who was willing to forgive a minor misdemeanour for an especially entertaining yarn. Mister B and Mister C were engaged in a long-standing rivalry, and neither of them would doubt even for a moment that any failure of a student in his class was caused, directly or indirectly, by the actions of the other (although Horst did feel a little bad for adding more fuel into the fire of the two teachers’ enmity, he reasoned to himself that they would still most certainly hate one another no matter what). Mister D held such a firm belief in inferiority of all the other nations compared to the English that the hackneyed excuse that Horst haven’t done his assignment, because he couldn’t understand it, being a dim-witted foreigner and all, continued to work on him even by the point, where the only thing that betrayed Horst’s non-native origin was a slight accent.

He lied to the teachers for Johannes’ sake too, and to the boys, who were older and bigger than his brother or even both of them sometimes, as well, for Johannes, despite being quite a capable liar himself, was strangely adamant on telling the truth whenever it was guaranteed to upset somebody. It was Horst's duty as the older sibling to protect the younger after all, even if the younger was an acerbic little twit with the pathological urge to antagonize people, who were much more powerful than him, either physically or socially. Although a part of him couldn’t help but wonder if he should leave Johannes in trouble just once, and then, perhaps, his brother would finally learn to keep his mouth shut when necessary.

***

Horst’s entry into adulthood was followed by a whole new array of lies.

He lied to potential employers about his education, skill-set and prior work experience. It wasn't that he needed to lie get employed – with his actual faculties he could have easily found a cushy little job if he wanted to – but his incessant desire to seek out new experiences often drove him to apply for a position he was completely unfamiliar with. He also lied about the reasons for his departure from any of the previous workplaces, simply because the managers, being a stodgy bunch with no inclination towards wanderlust, could never view “eh, I just got bored with it” as an acceptable explanation to why he left.

He lied to the ladies. Although, he liked to think of it more along the lines of "obfuscating the details" rather than straight-up lying. Sure, he wasn't an artist, but he did meet a whole lot of them during his brief stint as a model, which was sort of the same thing, as far as he was concerned; besides, maybe one day he shall wake up famous, after doodles-of-farm-animals-on-napkins-ism becomes the hottest trend in the art world – with all those crazy new art-styles, like cubism or expressionism, popping up nowadays that might as well happen. And sure, he was not going to marry this particular woman, or anyone for that matter, in the foreseeable future, despite everything he had said, but who knew, maybe he shall change his mind one day, he wasn't opposed to the whole idea of marriage after all.

He lied to the ladies’ fathers, brothers and, sometimes, husbands, more often than he would’ve liked solely as a way to stall for time as he was calculating an escape route, for only a world-class hypnotist, whom he, much to his dismay, wasn’t, would be able to convince them that it really wasn’t what it looked like.

He lied to attend the soirées, which he, being while upper still decidedly middle-class, had no chance at being invited to legitimately, and which he, naturally, regarded as his civic duty to attend. It was shockingly easy to put on a mask of a young nobleman from some indistinct European country – he already possessed several components essential for creating a convincing impression: an expensive dapper suit, courtesy manners and an enigmatic surname coupled with a foreign accent – and the only thing he needed to do was to generate a palpable air of contempt towards anyone, who couldn't name every single one of his ancestors counting back to at least tenth century. Now, to be frank, that mask was not made to stay on for very long, but it didn't need to: usually, by the time the guests at the evening realised that there never was such title as "Graf von Cabal", he has already sampled all the old wines and exotic cheeses, gotten invited to at least one upcoming polo game at the country mansion of some duke or suchlike, and snogged with at least one heiress to the throne of some small country over on the continent in the broom closet.

***

Horst didn’t lie to his brother after the accident. God knows, there were too many people doing that already. And what terrible lies those were: “She is in a better world now”, “Everything happens for a reason”, “There was no way anyone could have prevented that”. Instead he lied to the well-meaning fools, who genuinely wanted to help, and the pompous hypocrites, who just wanted to flaunt their supposed virtue in the wake of a tragedy, that their condolences were greatly appreciated, that Johannes hadn’t actually meant the things he had said, and the rest of the family was handling it, and him for that matter, quite well, thank you for your concern.

When Johannes – dishevelled, gaunt, inexplicably limping and obviously stark raving mad – woke him up in the middle of the night and asked for help, although not in a way he expected or would have preferred, Horst couldn’t bring himself to refuse, even though a part of him wanted to subdue his brother, drag him to a nearest pub and not let him out until he had at least one girl hanging off each of his arms. But it was his duty as an older sibling to support the younger through difficult times after all, especially since he realized that, seeing how he was the only person Johannes deemed trustworthy enough to be made aware of his intentions, he had no other choice but to become his brother’s accomplice on this dangerous endeavour, lest Johannes be left alone with his obsession.

So he lied for his brother’s sake to people he never thought he would have to lie to about things he never thought he would have to lie about for reasons he didn’t want to think of twice. He lied to museum guards that they were just tourists that got terribly, uh, _wie sagt man_ , lost, and would _Herr Wachmann_ be kind enough to point them to the direction of the nearest exit, _danke schön_. He lied to morgue workers that they were Professor So-and-so’s assistants, here to collect materials for his anatomy class and… Forms? No, he had not given them any forms, he must’ve forgotten; sure, they could return to the professor and ask for them, but you know how irritated the old coot gets when his mistakes are pointed out to him, perhaps they could manage without forms just this once? He lied to doctors at a mental institution that they were Mister Such-and-such’s nephews, who have only recently found out about their poor uncle’s passing, and were now hoping to collect his belongings, especially any drawings he might have made while under the psychiatric care, for dearest uncle loved drawing so. He lied to desperate parents at the end of their rope that the two of them were priests sent by the Primate himself – they have all the necessary credentials, look, they’re in Latin and everything – to investigate the case of alleged demonic possession, and may good souls have no doubt, for despite their young age they’re quite the experts in dealing with adversaries of the Lord, especially Brother Johan here.

Horst was a good man, or at least he tried to be. Yet whenever things were slow enough to allow a moment of self-reflection – usually when they were on a train to yet another site of reputed paranormal activity, or while Johannes was too engrossed in yet another freshly-”borrowed” grimoire to even pretend to hold a conversation – he found himself locked in an endless debate with an imaginary opponent he tried really hard not to acknowledge as his conscience. Yes, he would argue, it was unhealthy, but it was a temporary insanity, just a way for his brother to process grief. Some drown their sorrows in alcohol, others seek solace in the higher power, and Johannes, never one to follow social conventions, just happened to have developed an interest in the occult. Surely, he shall accept soon enough that natural order of things, as cruel and unfair as it may be, is not to be trifled with. In the meantime he just needs someone to watch over him to make sure he doesn’t accidentally hurt himself or anybody else.

***

When things suddenly went horribly wrong, Horst had to lie to the bloodthirsty creature towering over him in the darkness. It was a good thing he could lie on autopilot at that point, for he couldn’t hear a word he was saying over the panicked beating of his heart, and the sound of the door slamming shut echoing in his ears. Or perhaps it wasn’t, for it meant that later, during the unbearably long nights he had to lie to that monster, that woman, some more, telling tall tales of his brother’s proneness to accidents and petty distractions that, however, were still greatly outweighed by his loyalty. And during the days that were even longer he repeated the same lies in their most primitive form, stripped of the flowery language and practiced convincing tone, to himself – “Johannes will come back, he won’t abandon me here. Johannes will come back, he won’t abandon me here. Johannes has to come back, he can’t abandon me here” – trying in vain to drown out another, nasty, ugly lie that he could hear constantly in the back of his mind, growing louder and louder with every pang of pain in his stomach – “It’s okay, she’s no longer human. It’s okay, she’s no longer human. It’s okay, it’s not human. It’s okay, it’s not human.”

After he made the biggest mistake of his life – the last mistake of his life, technically – he lied to the thing he unknowingly invited to devour him whole and replace him with something straight out of the scary stories he used to tell his brother before bedtime. He told it that it would never win; that he would never let it take hold of him completely; that even though he now possessed inhuman strength and could move with incredible speed, even though the injuries his now twice-late cellmate had left him have healed completely, even though he couldn’t help but listen hungrily to the heartbeats of frogs croaking in nearby pond, crows resting on leaning headstones, mice skittering in the tall grass – he was still just a regular bloke, and a nice one at that, he wasn’t some sort of merciless predator made to own the night and he never will be. And he lied to himself that this thing was its own separate entity and not a part of him.

***

When he heard one sound he never thought he would hear again – the door to Druin crypt, his crypt at that point, really – opening for the first time in Hell knew how long, saw one person he always hoped he would and wished he would never have to see again, Horst listened to Johannes' proposal, even though a part of him wanted to tear him apart and leave his sorry remains to rot underground, like he left him all those years ago. And then Horst lied to himself anew. Sure, his tastes have become rather sanguine, but he was still a good, moral man, who knew right from wrong. And sure, his little brother appeared to have distanced himself from the rest of humanity even further, but he was still a decent enough man, whose heart was more or less in the right place, he just needed someone to watch over him to make sure he didn’t hurt himself more or hurt somebody, who didn’t deserve it.

And then he spent an entire year lying for his brother’s sake. He lied to the suckers, the rubes, the hoi polloi, the living breathing human beings, the naïve lambs unaware of the butchers following their every move with hungry, impatient eyes, trying to determine which ones could be sent to the slaughter without weighting too heavily on their conscience. He had reached such heights in his craft, he didn’t even need to be physically present before his intended victims to deceive them. He lied through colourful posters covered in bold slogans, through inviting openings of motley tents, through the mouths of the barkers that were specifically designed to appear as friendly as possible, through bright lights, exciting sounds and intriguing smells. It was truly his highest achievement as a liar, and he hated every moment of it.

As he saw the sun rise for the first time in nine years, Horst told what he was sure was his last lie. He told himself that it was for the best, that they both deserved what was coming for them, that his brother was beyond redemption, and he was beyond caring. He told himself that he couldn’t hear his brother’s desperate pleas, or that the pain in Johannes’ voice hadn’t made him hesitate for a fraction of a second.

Horst Cabal was a terrible liar. For no matter how hard he tried, he could never manage to fully convince the one person that was always willing to believe even his most outlandish claims – himself.


End file.
